Theos-Talk Archives (May 2002 Message tt00026)

PART VI -- A BEWITCHED LIFE by H P B




PART VI	-- A BEWITCHED LIFE

I fancied I was dead. My body lay cold and stiff in its last sleep,
whilst its dying consciousness, which still regarded itself as "I,"
realizing the event, was preparing to meet in a few seconds its own
extinction. It had been always my belief that as the brain preserved
heat longer than any of the other organs, and was the last to cease
its activity, the thought in it survived bodily death by several
minutes. Therefore, I was not in the least surprised to find in my
dream that while the frame had already crossed that awful gulf "no
mortal e'er re-passed," its consciousness was still in the gray
twilight, the first shadows of the great Mystery. Thus my THOUGHT
wrapped, as I believed, in the remnants, of its now fast retiring
vitality, was watching with intense and eager curiosity the approaches
of its own dissolution, i.e., of its annihilation. "I" was hastening
to record my last impressions, lest the dark mantle of eternal
oblivion should envelope me, before I had time to feel and enjoy, the
great, the supreme triumph of learning that my life-long convictions
were true, that death is a complete and absolute cessation of
conscious being. Everything around me was getting darker with every
moment. Huge grey shadows were moving before my vision, slowly at
first, then with accelerated motion, until they commenced whirling
around with an almost vertiginous rapidity. Then, as though that
motion had taken place for the purposes of brewing darkness, the
object once reached, it slackened its speed, and the darkness became
gradually transformed into intense blackness, it ceased altogether.
There was nothing now within my immediate perceptions, but that
fathomless black Space, as dark as pitch; to me it appeared as
limitless and as silent as the shoreless Ocean of Eternity upon which
Time, the progeny of man's brain, is for ever gliding, but which it
can never cross.

Dream is defined by Cato as "but the image of our hopes and fears."
Having never feared death when awake, I felt, in this dream of mine,
calm and serene at the idea of my speedy end. In truth, I felt rather
relieved at the thought -- probably owing to my recent mental
suffering -- that the end of all, of doubt, of fear for those I loved,
of suffering, and of every anxiety, was close at hand. The constant
anguish that had been gnawing ceaselessly at my heavy, aching heart
for many a long and weary month, had now become unbearable; and if as
Seneca thinks, death is but "the ceasing to be what we were before,"
it was better that I should die. The body is dead; "I," its
consciousness -- that which is all that remains of me now, for a few
moments longer -- am preparing to follow. Mental perceptions will get
weaker, more dim and hazy with every second of time, until the longed
for oblivion envelopes me completely in its cold shroud. Sweet is the
magic hand of Death, the great World-Comforter; profound and dreamless
is sleep in its unyielding arms. Yea, verily, it is a welcome guest. .
. . A calm and peaceful haven amidst the roaring billows of the Ocean
of life, whose breakers lash in vain the rock-bound shores of Death.
Happy the lonely bark that drifts into the still waters of its black
gulf, after having been so long, so cruelly tossed about by the angry
waves of sentient life. Moored in it for evermore, needing no longer
either sail or rudder, my bark will now find rest. Welcome then, O
Death, at this tempting price; and fare thee well, poor body, which,
having neither sought it nor derived pleasure from it, I now readily
give up!

While uttering this death-chant to the prostrate form before me, I
bent over, and examined it with curiosity. I felt the surrounding
darkness oppressing me, weighing on me almost tangibly, and I fancied
I found in it the approach of the Liberator I was welcoming. And yet
how very strange! If real, final Death takes place in our
consciousness; if after the bodily death, "I" and my conscious
perceptions are one -- how is it that these perceptions do not become
weaker, why does my brain-action seem as vigorous as ever now . . . .
that I am de facto dead? . . . . Nor does the usual feeling of
anxiety, the "heavy heart" so-called, decrease in intensity; nay, it
even seems to become worse . . . . unspeakably so! . . . . How long it
takes for full oblivion to arrive! . . . Ah, here's my body again! . .
. Vanished out of sight for a second or two, it reappears before me
once more . . . . How white and ghastly it looks! Yet . . . . its
brain cannot be quite dead, since "I," its consciousness, am still
acting, since we two fancy that we still are, that we live and think,
disconnected from our creator and its ideating cells.
Suddenly I felt a strong desire to see how much longer the progress of
dissolution was likely to last, before it placed its last seal on the
brain and rendered it inactive. I examined my brain in its cranial
cavity, through the (to me) entirely transparent walls and roof of the
skull, and even touched the brain-matter . . . . How or with whose
hands, I am now unable to say; but the impression of the slimy,
intensely cold matter produced a very strong impression on me, in that
dream. To my great dismay, I found that the blood having entirely
congealed and the brain-tissues having themselves undergone a change
that would no longer permit any molecular action, it became impossible
for me to account for the phenomena now taking place with myself. Here
was I, -- or my consciousness which is all one -- standing apparently
entirely disconnected from my brain which could no longer function . .
. . But I had no time left for reflection. A new and most
extraordinary change in my perceptions had taken place and now
engrossed my whole attention . . . . What does this signify? . . . .

The same darkness was around me as before, a black, impenetrable
space, extending in every direction. Only now, right before me, in
whatever direction I was looking, moving with me which way soever I
moved, there was a gigantic round clock; a disc, whose large white
face shone ominously on the ebony-black background. As I looked at its
huge dial, and at the pendulum moving to and fro regularly and slowly
in Space, as if its swinging meant to divide eternity, I saw its
needles pointing to seven minutes past five. "The hour at which my
torture had commenced at Kioto!" I had barely found time to think of
the coincidence, when to my unutterable horror, I felt myself going
through the same, the identical, process that I had been made to
experience on that memorable and fatal day. I swam underground,
dashing swiftly through the earth; I found myself once more in the
pauper's grave and recognized my brother-in-law in the mangled
remains; I witnessed his terrible death; entered my sister's house;
followed her agony, and saw her go mad. I went over the same scenes
without missing a single detail of them. But, alas! I was no longer
iron-bound in the calm indifference that had then been mine, and which
in that first vision had left me as unfeeling to my great misfortune
as if I had been a heartless thing of rock. My mental tortures were
now becoming beyond description and well-nigh unbearable. Even the
settled despair, the never-ceasing anxiety I was constantly
experiencing when awake, had become now, in my dream and in the face
of this repetition of vision and events, as an hour of darkened
sunlight compared to a deadly cyclone. Oh! how I suffered in this
wealth and pomp of infernal horrors, to which the conviction of the
survival of man's consciousness after death -- for in that dream I
firmly believed that my body was dead -- added the most terrifying of
all!

The relative relief I felt, when, after going over the last scene, I
saw once more the great white face of the dial before me was not of
long duration. The long, arrow-shaped needle was pointing on the
colossal disk at -- seven minutes and a half-past five o'clock. But,
before I had time to well realize the change, the needle moved slowly
backwards, stopped at precisely the seventh minute, and -- O cursed
fate! . . . . I found myself driven into a repetition of the same
series over again! Once more I swam underground, and saw, and heard,
and suffered every torture that hell can provide; I passed through
every mental anguish known to man or fiend. I returned to see the
fatal dial and its needle -- after what appeared to me an eternity --
moved, as before, only half a minute forward. I beheld it, with
renewed terror, moving back again, and felt myself propelled forward
anew. And so it went on, and on, and on, time after time, in what
seemed to me an endless succession, a series which never had any
beginning, nor would it ever have an end . . . .

Worst of all; my consciousness, my "I," had apparently acquired the
phenomenal capacity of trebling, quadrupling, and even of decuplating
itself. I lived, felt and suffered, in the same space of time, in
half-a-dozen different places at once, passing over various events of
my life, at different epochs and under the most dissimilar
circumstances; though predominant over all was my spiritual experience
at Kioto. Thus as in the famous fugue in Don Giovanni, the
heart-rending notes of Elvira's aria of despair ring high above, but
interfere in no way with the melody of the minuet, the song of
seduction, and the chorus, so I went over and over my travailed woes,
the feelings of agony unspeakable at the awful sights of my vision,
the repetition of which blunted in no wise even a single pang of my
despair and horror; nor did these feelings weaken in the least scenes
and events entirely disconnected with the first one, that I was living
through again, or interfere in any way the one with the other. It was
a maddening experience! A series of contrapuntal, mental
phantasmagoria from real life. Here was I, during the same
half-a-minute of time, examining with cold curiosity the mangled
remains of my sister's husband; following with the same indifference
the effects of the news on her brain, as in my first Kioto vision, and
feeling at the same time hell-torture for these very events, as when I
returned to consciousness. I was listening to the philosophical
discourses of the Bonze, every word of which I heard and understood,
and was trying to laugh him to scorn. I was again a child, then a
youth, hearing my mother's and my sweet sister's voices, admonishing
me and teaching duty to all men. I was saving a friend from drowning,
and was sneering at his aged father who thanks me for saving a "soul"
yet unprepared to meet his Maker.

"Speak of dual consciousness, you psycho-physiologists!" -- I cried,
in one of the moments when agony, mental and as it seemed to me
physical also, had arrived at a degree of intensity which would have
killed a dozen living men; "speak of your psychological and
physiological experiments, you schoolmen, puffed up with pride and
book-learning! Here am I to give you the lie. . . ." And now I was
reading the works and holding converse with learned professors and
lecturers, who had led me to my fatal scepticism. And, while arguing
the impossibility of consciousness divorced from its brain, I was
shedding tears of blood over the supposed fate of my nieces and
nephews. More terrible than all: I knew, as only a liberated
consciousness can know, that all I had seen in my vision at Japan, and
all that I was seeing and hearing over and over again now, was true in
every point and detail, that it was a long string of ghastly and
terrible, still of real, actual, facts.

For, perhaps, the hundredth time, I had riveted my attention on the
needle of the clock, I had lost the number of my gyrations and was
fast coming to the conclusion that they would never stop, that
consciousness is, after all, indestructible, and that this was to be
my punishment in Eternity. I was beginning to realize from personal
experience how the condemned sinners would feel -- "were not eternal
damnation a logical and mathematical impossibility in an
ever-progressing Universe" -- I still found the force to argue. Yea
indeed; at this hour of my ever-increasing agony, my consciousness --
now my synonym for "I" -- had still the power of revolting at certain
theological claims, of denying all their propositions, all -- save
ITSELF . . . . No; I denied the independent nature of my consciousness
no longer, for I knew it now to be such. But is it eternal withal? O
thou incomprehensible and terrible Reality! But if thou art eternal,
who then art thou? -- since there is no deity, no God. Whence dost
thou come, and when didst thou first appear, if thou art not a part of
the cold body lying yonder? And whither dost thou lead me, who am
thyself, and shall our thought and fancy have an end? What is thy real
name, thou unfathomable REALITY, and impenetrable MYSTERY! Oh, I would
fain annihilate thee . . . . "Soul -- Vision"! -- who speaks of Soul,
and whose voice is this? . . . . It says that I see now for myself,
that there is a Soul in man, after all. . . . I deny this. My Soul, my
vital Soul, or the Spirit of life, has expired with my body, with the
gray matter of my brain, This "I " of mine, this consciousness, is not
yet proven to me as eternal. Reincarnation, in which the Bonze felt so
anxious I should believe, may be true . . . . Why not? Is not the
flower born year after year from the same root? Hence this "I" once
separated from, its brain, losing its balance and calling forth such a
host of visions . . . . before reincarnating.

I was again face to face with the inexorable, fatal clock. And as I
was watching its needle, I heard the voice of the Bonze, coming out of
the depths of its white face, saying: "In this case, I fear you would
have only to open and to shut the temple door, over and over again,
during a period which, however short, would seem to you an eternity" .
. . .

The clock had vanished, darkness made room for light, the voice of my
old friend was drowned by a multitude of voices overhead on deck; and
I awoke in my berth, covered with a cold perspiration, and faint with
terror.


VIII -- A TALE OF WOE


We were at Hamburg, and no sooner had I seen my partners, who could
hardly recognise me, than with their consent and good wishes I started
for Nuremberg.

Half-an-hour after my arrival, the last doubt with regard to the
correctness of my vision had disappeared. The reality was worse than
any expectations could have made it, and I was henceforward doomed to
the most desolate life. I ascertained that I had seen the terrible
tragedy, with all its heartrending details. My brother-in-law, killed
under the wheels of a machine; my sister, insane, and now rapidly
sinking toward her end; my niece -- the sweet flower of nature's
fairest work -- dishonoured, in a den of infamy; the little children
dead of a contagious disease in an orphanage; my last surviving nephew
at sea, no one knew where. A whole house, a home of love and peace,
scattered; and I, left alone, a witness of this world of death, of
desolation and dishonour. The news filled me with infinite despair,
and I sank helpless before the wholesale, dire disaster, which rose
before me all at once. The shock proved too much, and I fainted. The
last thing I heard before entirely losing my consciousness was a
remark of the Burgmeister: "Had you, before leaving Kioto, telegraphed
to the city authorities of your whereabouts, and of your intention of
coming home to take charge of your young relatives, we might have
placed them elsewhere, and thus have saved them from their fate. No
one knew that the children had a well-to-do relative. They were left
paupers and had to be dealt with as such. They were comparatively
strangers in Nuremberg, and under the unfortunate circumstances you
could have hardly expected anything else . . . . I can only express my
sincere sorrow."

It was this terrible knowledge that I might, at any rate, have saved
my young niece from her unmerited fate, but that through my neglect I
had not done so, that was killing me. Had I but followed the friendly
advice of the Bonze, Tamoora, and telegraphed to the authorities some
weeks previous to my return much might have been avoided. It was all
this, coupled with the fact that I could no longer doubt clairvoyance
and clairaudience -- the possibility of which I had so long denied --
that brought me so heavily down upon my knees. I could avoid the
censure of my fellow-creatures but I could never escape the stings of
my conscience, the reproaches of my own aching heart -- no, not as
long as I lived! I cursed my stubborn scepticism, my denial of facts,
my early education, I cursed myself and the whole world. . . . .

For several days I contrived not to sink beneath my load, for I had a
duty to perform to, the dead and to the living. But my sister once
rescued from the pauper's asylum, placed under the care of the best
physicians, with her daughter to attend to her last moments, and the
Jewess, whom I had brought to confess her crime, safely lodged in
goal -- my fortitude and strength suddenly abandoned me. Hardly a week
after my arrival I was myself no better than a raving maniac, helpless
in the strong grip of a brain fever. For several weeks I lay between
life and death, the terrible disease defying the skill of the best
physicians. At last my strong constitution prevailed, and -- to my
lifelong sorrow -- they proclaimed me saved.

I heard the news with a bleeding heart. Doomed to drag the loathsome
burden of life henceforth alone, and in constant remorse; hoping for
no help or remedy on earth, and still refusing to believe in the
possibility of anything better than a short survival of consciousness
beyond the grave, this unexpected return to life added only one more
drop of gall to my bitter feelings. They were hardly soothed by the
immediate return, during the first days of my convalescence, of those
unwelcome and unsought for visions, whose correctness and reality I
could deny no more. Alas the day! they were no longer in my sceptical,
blind mind.

"The children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain Fantasy";

but always the faithful photographs of the real woes and sufferings of
my fellow creatures, of my best friends. . . . Thus I found myself
doomed, whenever I was left for a moment alone, to the helpless
torture of a chained Prometheus. During the still hours of night, as
though held by some pitiless iron hand, I found myself led to my
sister's bedside, forced to watch there hour after hour, and see the
silent disintegration of her wasted organism; to witness and feel the
sufferings that her own tenantless brain could no longer reflect or
convey to her perceptions. But there was something still more horrible
to barb the dart that could never be extricated. I had to look, by
day, at the childish innocent face of my young niece, so sublimely
simple and guileless in her pollution; and to witness, by night, how
the full knowledge and recollection of her dishonour, of her young
life now for ever blasted, came to her in her dreams, as soon as she
was asleep. The dreams took an objective form to me, as they had done
on the steamer; I had to live them over again, night after night, and
feel the same terrible despair. For now, since I believed in the
reality of seership, and had come to the conclusion that in our bodies
lies hidden, as in the caterpillar, the chrysalis which may contain in
its turn the butterfly -- the symbol of the soul -- I no longer
remained indifferent, as of yore, to what I witnessed in my Soul-life.
Something had suddenly developed in me, had broken loose from its icy
cocoon. Evidently I no longer saw only in consequence of the
identification of my inner nature with a Daij-Dzin; my visions arose
in, consequence of a direct personal psychic development, the fiendish
creatures only taking care that I should see nothing of an agreeable
or elevating nature. Thus, now, not an unconscious pang in my dying
sister's emaciated body, not a thrill of horror in my niece's restless
sleep at the recollection of the crime perpetrated upon her, an
innocent child, but found a responsive echo in my bleeding heart. The
deep fountain of sympathetic love and sorrow had gushed out from the
physical heart, and was now loudly echoed by the awakened soul
separated from the body. Thus had I to drain the cup of misery to the
very dregs! Woe is me, it was a daily and nightly torture! Oh, how I
mourned over my proud folly; how I was punished for having neglected
to avail myself at Moto of the proffered purification, for now I had
come to believe even in the efficacy of the latter. The Daij-Dzin had
indeed obtained control over me; and the fiend had let loose all the
dogs of hell upon his victim. . . . .

At last the awful gulf was reached and crossed. The poor insane martyr
dropped into her dark, and now welcome grave, leaving behind her, but
for a few short months, her young, her first-born, daughter.
Consumption made short work of that tender girlish frame. Hardly a
year after my arrival, I was left alone in the whole wide world, my
only surviving nephew having expressed a desire to follow his
sea-faring career.

And now, the sequel of my sad story is soon told. A wreck, a
prematurely old man, looking at thirty as though sixty winters had
passed over my doomed head, and owing to the never-ceasing visions,
myself daily on the verge of insanity, I suddenly formed a desperate
resolution. I would return to Kioto and seek out the Yamabooshi. I
would prostrate myself at the feet of the holy man, and would not
leave him until he had recalled the Frankenstein he had raised, the
Frankenstein with whom at the time, it was I, myself, who would, not
part, through my insolent pride and unbelief.

Three months later I was in my Japanese home again, and I at-once
sought out my old, venerable Bonze, Tamoora Hideyeri, I now implored
him to take me without an hour's delay to the Yamabooshi, the innocent
cause of my daily tortures. His answer but placed the last, the
supreme seal on my doom and tenfold intensified my despair. The
Yamabooshi had left the country for lands unknown! He had departed one
fine morning into the interior, on a pilgrimage, and according to
custom, would be absent, unless natural death shortened the period,
for no less than seven years! . . . .

In this mischance, I applied for help and protection to other learned
Yamabooshis; and though well aware how useless it was in my case to
seek efficient cure from any other "adept," my excellent old friend
did everything he could to help me in my misfortune. But it was to no
purpose, and the canker-worm of my life's despair could not be
thoroughly extricated. I found from them that not one of these learned
men could promise to relieve me entirely from the demon of clairvoyant
obsession. It was he who raised certain Daij-Dzins, calling on them to
show futurity, or things that had already come to pass, who alone had
full control over them. With kind sympathy, which I had now learned to
appreciate, the holy men invited me to join the group of their
disciples, and learn from them what I could do for myself. "Will
alone, faith in your own soul-powers, can help you now," they said.
"But it may take several years to undo even a part of the great
mischief," they added. "A Daij-Dzin is easily dislodged in the
beginning; if left alone, he takes possession of a man's nature and it
becomes almost impossible to uproot the fiend without killing his
victim."

Persuaded that there was nothing but this left for me to do, I
gratefully assented, doing my best to believe in all that these holy
men believed in, and yet ever failing to do so in my heart. The demon
of unbelief and all-denial seemed rooted in me more firmly ever than
the Daij-Dzin. Still I did all I could do, decided as I was not to
lose my last chance of salvation. Therefore, I proceeded without delay
to, free myself from the world and my commercial obligations, in order
to live for several years an independent life. I settled my accounts
with my Hamburg partners and severed my connection with the firm.
Notwithstanding considerable financial losses resulting from such a
precipitate liquidation, I found myself, after closing the accounts, a
far richer man than I had thought I was. But wealth had no longer any
attraction for me, now that I had no one to share it with, no one to
work for. Life had become a burden; and such was my indifference to my
future, that while giving away all my fortune to my nephew -- in case
he should return alive from his sea voyager -- should have neglected
entirely even a small provision for myself, had not my native partner
interfered and insisted upon my making it. I now recognized, with
Lao-tze, that Knowledge was the only firm hold for a man to trust to,
as it is the only one that cannot be shaken by any tempest. Wealth is
a weak anchor in the days of sorrow, and self-conceit the most fatal
counsellor. Hence I followed the advice of my friends, and laid aside
for myself a modest sum, which would be sufficient to assure me a
small income for life, or if I ever left my new friends and
instructors. Having settled my earthly accounts and disposed of my
belongings at Kioto, I joined the "Masters of the Long Vision," who
took me to their mysterious abode. There I remained for several years,
studying very earnestly and in the most complete solitude, seeing no
one but a few of the members of our religious community.

Many are the mysteries of nature that I have fathomed since then, and
many secret folio from the library of Tzionene have I devoured,
obtaining thereby mastery over several kinds of invisible beings of a
lower order. But the great secret of power over the terrible Daij-Dzin
I could not get. It remains in the possession of a very limited number
of the highest Initiates of Lao-tze, the great majority of the
Yamabooshis themselves being ignorant how to obtain such mastery over
the dangerous Elemental. One who would reach such power of control
would have to become entirely identified with the Yamabooshis, to
accept their views and beliefs, and to attain the highest degree of
Initiation. Very naturally, I was found unfit to join the Fraternity,
owing to many insurmountable reasons besides my congenital and
ineradicable scepticism, though I tried hard to believe. Thus,
partially relieved of my affliction and taught how to conjure the
unwelcome visions away, I still remained, and do remain to this day,
helpless to prevent their forced appearance before me now and then.

It was after assuring myself of my unfitness for the exalted position
of an independent Seer and Adept that I reluctantly gave up any
further trial. Nothing had been heard of the holy man, the first
innocent cause of my misfortune; and the old Bonze himself, who
occasionally visited me in my retreat, either could not, or would not,
inform me of the whereabouts of the Yamabooshi. When, therefore, I had
to give up all hope of his ever relieving me entirely from my fatal
gift, I resolved to return to Europe, to settle in solitude for the
rest of my life. With this object in view, I purchased through my late
partners the Swiss chalet in which my hapless sister and I were born,
where I had grown up under her care, and selected it for my future
hermitage.

When bidding me farewell for ever on the steamer which took me back to
my fatherland, the good old Bonze tried to console me for my
disappointments. "My son," he said, "regard all that happened to you
as your Karma -- a just retribution. No one who had subjected himself
willingly to the power of a Daij-Dzin can ever hope to become a Rahat
(an Adept), a high-souled Yamabooshi -- unless immediately purified.
At best, as in your case, he may become fitted to oppose and to
successfully fight off the fiend. Like a scar left after a poisonous
wound the race of a Daij-Dzin can never be effaced from the Soul until
purified by a new rebirth Withal, feel not dejected, but be of good
cheer in your affliction, since it has led you to acquire true
knowledge, and to accept many a truth you would have otherwise
rejected with contempt. And of this priceless knowledge, acquired
through suffering and personal efforts -- no Daij-Dzin can ever
deprive you. Fare thee well, then, and may the Mother of Mercy, the
great Queen of Heaven, afford you comfort and protection."

We parted, and since then I have led the life of an anchorite, in
constant solitude and study. Though still occasionally afflicted, I do
not regret the years I have passed under the instruction of the
Yamabooshis, but feel gratified for the knowledge received. Of the
priest Tamoora Hideyeri I think always with sincere affection and
respect. I corresponded regularly with him to the day of his death; an
event which, with all its to me painful details, I had the
unthanked-for privilege of witnessing across the seas, at the very
hour in which it occurred.

== H P Blavatsky

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